First the iPad, and now a debate on the relevance of Flash. Apple continues to ignore it and touts HTML5 as the future. Google is also pushing HTML5 on YouTube, with other video sites starting to follow suit. Even Mozilla is disabling it in its new mobile browser, Maemo. Clearly, the death knell for Adobe’s most controversial product is getting louder than ever.
But it’s still all talk, all noise. How about some real action? Thankfully, over at Binary Bonsai, Michael Heilemann has taken it upon himself to drop Flash for the whole month of February as a response to this tweeted challenge:
All those who think no flash on ipad is A-OK please uninstall flash from your current browser, use that for a month then get back to me.
Installing a Flash blocker isn’t really a groundbreaking exercise and is tamer than uninstalling Flash completely, but now is the best time to figure out how dependent we are on it.
So can you survive sans Flash? I won’t go out of my way to defend it nor suffer from withdrawal without it, but the status of HTML5 video alone seems troubling enough.
More importantly, most discussions cover only the question of replacing Flash video, not other applications like games. That would be an even tougher nut to crack, even with the dawn of purely Javascript-based games.
One thing that struck me in Information Architects’ review of the iPad is how they noticed the UI guideline to make applications look like real-world objects:
Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.
It’s a small detail, but it certainly reinforces the type of computing environment the iPad has: more abstracted than the usual PC/Mac/Unix operating systems and its desktop metaphor.
iA is none too pleased with this guideline, however, as the eyecandy enter kitsch territory and fails to solve interaction problems.
Using a book shelf for choosing a book is a consistent metaphor, but does it help you understanding the interface? Does it help in any way? Do you still like the hard to scan bookshelf with after looking at it for the 200th time? What if you have 200 books?
Note: I’m not saying that using quirky metaphors and plastering your app with special effects will kill the perspective to sell your app. Unfortunately the audience for kitsch is a bigger audience than the elitist UID guild. But usually phony design doesn’t have a long life span.
Metaphors should not distract or confuse, they must clarify. Apple and those that design for it love their beautiful interfaces and the metaphors that inspired it, and while attention to detail is highly admired, design abuse via mainstream device iPad, will become rampant. It’s tempting to pull out all the stops, but as with many things in life, exercise restraint.
Right now, so many major players in the web browsing space have turned to the WebKit project for its rendering needs—
- Apple: Safari
- Google: Chrome
- Nokia: Symbian web browser for S60
- Google: Android web browser
- Research In Motion: BlackBerry web browser
- and more
—that one has to wonder if web browsers should just stop running on their own and agree to just merge, possibly under WebKit, since it seems to be so popular across the board. To be clear, if Mozilla’s Gecko renderer had the same track record, I’d say the same thing.
It’s less a matter of killing healthy competition and innovation among vendors, more about eliminating the headache of rendering differences. People can probably file away all the browser bugs and inconsistencies across browsers and their various versions in a full encyclopedia set. (IE6 would take up at least a couple of volumes.) This tedious aspect of front-end development could be greatly reduced if all these browsers adopted the same rendering kit. Then the vendors can focus on improving and innovating in other aspects, like what Google did with its JavaScript V8 engine.
Mozilla can enjoy more time expanding its already large and loyal userbase, working on Labs products like Bespin and Weave, pushing for the WOFF web font format, and so on.
One can argue that if we should be able to choose browsers, then the same can be said for underlying rendering engines, and accept the differences as a a consequence of the freedom to choose. But does a consumer of the Web need to choose which rendering engine he prefers? Or are the differences something we can finally do without?
I, for one, would be thrilled if we didn’t have to worry whether websites looked the same in every browser, and just focus on making websites look and behave the best they can. And I’m pretty sure ordinary users don’t even think about rendering differences.
As much as I wish we’d move on and get Apple off our radar, its decisions have a rippling effect in the industry and the future of various technologies. The next issue on the list? The Web versus App debate. This can be framed more specifically as a Mobile Web vs. Objective-C Web debate in the context of Apple’s mobile landscape, but as early discussions arise, it’s transforming into an interoperability vs. superior user experience debate. Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design, writes:
At one point in time, J2ME (now Java ME) and WAP were the starting points for a discussion on mobile strategy and the web. Then, for a brief period of time, you talked about HTML/CSS. Now, for a growing majority of mobile strategies that don’t require a global presence on widely varying devices, the discussion begins with iPhone. Smart client is now iPhone app, and in many cases, the app is primary to the experience, not secondary to the browser. And iPad app may soon replace iPhone app as the starting point.
Frankly, as the adoption rate of iPhone increases and if iPad follows suit, it will become increasingly difficult to argue in favor of a starting point other than iPhone OS. The NPR iPad app, for one, provides a much more pleasant user experience than NPR.org.
Peter-Paul Koch steps in and plants himself firmly on the interoperability front, maintaining allegiance to the Web:
This is a total no-brainer when we’re talking about games and other entertainment apps. When it comes to complex, graphic games, vendors will opt for superior UX, and once you’ve done that, starting on iPhone OS makes excellent sense.
But if you build an integrated social media client, is superior UX still so important that you can afford to ignore non-iPhones? I don’t think so. I think creators of such apps would do better to create one in web standards so that it runs on all (well, many) devices. There’s stiff competition out there, and the wider your reach, the better chance you have of prevailing.
Meanwhile, Faruk Ates goes the complete opposite: rooting for UX, lamenting the existence of multiple browsers, and emphasizing the need to make a buck. The debate expands further and we see clashing ideologies of democracy vs. walled gardens, free vs. paid business models, and so on. All these further reinforce how Apple’s philosophies go against those of the Web.
With all its new moves, Apple has been targeting all sorts of corporate entities for its own gain: Adobe, Google, the whole porn industry…but now is it also hurting developers? consumers? the Web? itself?
Hostility towards competitors is, I suppose, all part of the game. But this action is also hugely hostile towards developers themselves. The banned development environments offer things that Apple’s Xcode doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just a different choice of language, one that a particular deveoper might feel more comfortable in. But often the advantage is simplification—the use of higher-level programming languages (like Lua, or JavaScript, or C#) and frameworks that take out a lot of the grunt-work of software development (like writing a 3D engine). In turn, developers get quicker development cycles, easier development, fewer bugs, and overall, superior applications. Banning these tools doesn’t just hurt competitors. It hurts developers on Apple’s platform, and in turn hurts the platform itself.
Apple’s done a lot of things to stir the pot, and while such stringent practices have been known to yield revolutionary results, its actions continue to seem awfully ruthless. Choosing a more favorable approach to mobile development could very well be tainted by the company’s values.
In celebration of the iPad retail launch, Apple has created a gallery of iPad-ready websites that are said to embrace “the latest web standards—including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript”. That is, no Flash. You can even add your site to the gallery (scroll to the bottom).
Is Apple really opening up?
Let’s get the snark out of the way: a gallery, really? How novel. Right now there’s a vertical list (no Cover Flow?) of 20 top-tier websites. Will Apple really painstakingly update this list and add every possible HTML5/CSS3/JS-ready site submitted?
It’s a rare thing for Apple to lead a user-generated campaign like this but its best intentions are a thin veil over their real agenda—eliminating the competition and expanding further in the multimedia business. Does it really care about anything other than the big fish? What are the odds that the most humble of websites will even get into the gallery? Apple markets its products by partnering with the largest corporations that fit into its plans; I can’t imagine caring for the little guy in all of this.
This isn’t even in the same league as the iTunes app store—whose contents number in the hundreds of thousands—but could easily apply the profit-based and biased policies anyway. Not what I would call open or little guy friendly.
Is Apple a true web standards crusader?
Speaking of the app store: you can also develop specifically for the iPhone/iPod/iPad family using the SDK, but those apps don’t work in other devices. The mobile web is booming because of both the “web standards way” and the “mobile app” way, but how are device-specific apps any better than Flash apps (which happen to be cross-platform outside of Apple’s products)? Flipping off Flash when HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t ready isn’t a very responsible thing to do.
If Apple really wants to promote web standards, it should be doing a lot more with its resources to convert and educate people. The gallery is one thing, this documentation is another good step, but where are the resources for developing in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript? Partnerships with web standards groups like WaSP? Zeldman or one of the Super Friends speaking at the keynote?
If Apple really wants to promote web standards, see how it practically equates HTML5 with Flash-free media and nothing more. No oohs and ahs over CSS3′s text shadows and rounded corners or HTML5′s geolocation and <canvas>. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce the mainstream crowd to the wonders of these new technologies, yet all it’s pushing is anti-Flash propaganda.
One more thing…
Dear Apple, you’ve done a lot of groundbreaking things, but if you’re going to use web standards as a selling point for your most adjective-ridden product ever, you can do a hell of a lot better than an an anti-Flash gallery.
I find it very intriguing that Microsoft chose to redesign its new Windows Phone 7 Series interface this way:
The design and layout of 7 Series’ UI (internally called Metro) is really quite original, utilizing what one of the designers (Albert Shum, formerly of Nike) calls an “authentically digital” and “chromeless” experience. What does that mean? Well we can tell you what it doesn’t mean — no shaded icons, no faux 3D or drop shadows, no busy backgrounds (no backgrounds at all), and very little visual flair besides clean typography and transition animations. The whole look is strangely reminiscent of a terminal display (maybe Microsoft is recalling its DOS roots here) — almost Tron-like in its primary color simplicity. To us, it’s rather exciting. This OS looks nothing like anything else on the market, and we think that’s to its advantage. Admittedly, we could stand for a little more information available within single views, and we have yet to see how the phone will handle things like notifications, but the design of the interface is definitely in a class of its own.
Curveball thrown. While the look has been in Zunes for sometime now, the real challenge lies in whether this will take off for mobile phones. I have to commend their bravery for taking this step, going the complete opposite of Apple’s love for rounded corners, gradients, and shadows. It also looks open and airy compared to all the boxes (no matter how rounded) on the iPhone.
It definitely changes the game a bit, and like several others I’m starting to feel like the Apple interface looks dated next to this one. Pretty big deal if you ask me.
This move could backfire. People tend to shy away from minimalism, not to mention it could actually be underdesigned, lacking in visual cues and icons. It falls short of the unified look Apple has built over the years, and I doubt it could start a UI revolution the way OS X did. Would Microsoft even use this for its desktop OS?
We’ll also have to find how it really measures up in real-world testing because the interface alone won’t determine success, but also performance and features (IE and Bing instead of Safari/Mozilla and Google? What apps will it have?). Still, bold is better than half-baked, and in the mobile space this look definitely sets them apart.
The Apple stories just don’t stop coming, do they? Here’s yet another provocative issue concerning the company, but this time with web development: the iPhone is the new Internet Explorer 6, according to Peter Paul Koch.
The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don’t pay attention, we’ll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we’ll have the real mobile web that wasn’t made by us and doesn’t give a shit about web standards and best practices.
Worse, it seems web developers are happy with this state of affairs. It seems web developers are congratulating themselves on excluding 85% of the smartphone users. They certainly never bother to check their sites in S60 WebKit, the largest smartphone browser in the world.
Fucking dimwits.
We’re doing exactly the same as ten years ago. We now say “iPhone” instead of “IE6,” but otherwise nothing’s changed.
No, wait, there’s one more change: the iPhone has far less mobile market share now than IE6 had desktop share back then.
The once most advanced browser is now the most hated, and the same fate could happen with the iPhone and its mobile web browser. However, given that they were made by two very different companies—the oft-hated Microsoft and the much-adored Apple—it’s hard to imagine the revolutionary smartphone gaining a stigma someday. An interesting achievement if that does somehow happen, but what an unfortunate future that would be.
Still, I have two points to make. First: I’m glad that a reputable voice is finally calling out this obsession with creating custom-tailored websites for the iPhone, when it’s supposed to have the most advanced browser, displaying pages as they normally would on a regular computer. Chances are you don’t have to. That’s what the multitouch zoom gesture is for, so that the screen size wouldn’t be such a hindrance.
Second: hype, here we go again. PPK draws back the curtain and tells us that there are other devices far more popular than the iPhone, yet the buzz about mobile web development is strongest with iPhone apps and iPhone app-like websites. It goes against the very idea of web standards, of making websites work in as many platforms as possible, not just what gains the most attention and is considered cool. (As an aside: what can be said about implementing CSS3 properties via browser-specific extensions? Is it the same thing?)
Finally, a minor third point: Koch isn’t addressing every mobile web developer in his article, just the ones that are so caught up in this iPhone-loving bubble that it’d be a shame when they mislead impressionable developers branching out to the mobile arena.
And a far worse shame if because of the hype we somehow get stuck in the rut that is IE6 all over again.
The Apple iPad has polarized the tech industry in the past week. I’m amused by this development, not in the context of product innovation or what it could mean for web design and development, but for the culture of tech opinions.
There’s the half that believes the iPad is not the revolutionary new step in computing people having been waiting for, and then there’s the other half that thinks those critics are not the iPad’s target market. Considering how Steve Jobs began with his keynote about the iPhone is now dominating the mobile phone industry over veterans Nokia and Samsung, it certainly takes a lot to accept that the iPad might not enjoy the same fate. This short and sweet (which is rare) post by Jeff Lamarche puts things in perspective:
I’m sure somebody has told you all this before, but let me point it out again: it’s not always about you. Products can be successful even if they aren’t right for you.
[...] I’m a techie, but I don’t need to be able to program on every electronic device I own. I don’t hate my dishwasher because I can’t get to the command line. I don’t hate my DVD player because it runs a proprietary operating system. Sheesh.
But my beef with this is: hardly ever does that argument surface when not so popular, not so geek-worthy products surface. From what I’ve seen in tech culture, it’s so much easier to reject, even hate a product than even entertain the notion that it could succeed. In general, in a certain demographic, in a certain geographic region.
At times the word easier gets replaced by cooler. It’s cooler to hate stuff; that’s what techies are supposed do.
See how all the Apple or tech pundits are squeezing out the possibilities where the iPad could work wonders. Will it kill e-book readers? Will it revitalize the newspaper industry? Will it shake up processes in education, art, medicine, and business? Which function was it born to do?—as though it hasn’t been discovered only because Steve Jobs didn’t whisper the answer in their ears.
Is it because of passion for the brand? I would think other products may not deserve the same passion, but they do deserve a fair chance. Don’t hate a product just because it isn’t right for you.
Perhaps now there’s half of a crowd deciding people shouldn’t be so quick to judge, the tradition could change. Or it could not, because Apple is the exception to the rule.
It’s not just about net neutrality or privacy anymore. Our future internet could be the very opposite of what it is today—free—specifically due to companies dominating their markets and the constant push to simplify the user experience.
Tim O’Reilly predicts a war is coming, one where we are at the mercy of the internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple: they stop making the services we are so highly dependent on interoperable.
It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.
Chris Messina fears something similar as well: the death of the URL, as new formats for delivering web content are abstracting the website-going experience and letting ourselves relinquish control.
By removing our ability to navigate, choose, and share freely — these app stores are exchanging our freedom for a promise that they’ll keep us safe, give us everything we need, and do all the choosing of what’s “good enough” for us — all starting at ninety-nine cents a hit.
I know that if we always look at things with a worst case scenario in mind, we’ll never get any work done from here on out. But better to worry now than when it becomes impossible to undo things. I like how the Web is now, no matter how chaotic and crap-filled it can be.
That said, if the URL disappears, I know few people would be troubled by it, and an overhaul of the system may be needed anyway.
And as for the giants bullying us into a corner, it makes me wish the Long Tail would stand a chance.
Twitter definitely upped its game as its new homepage rolled out today (viewable only if you’re logged out). Now its greatest strengths are featured front and center: real-time search and trends. A wise upgrade no doubt, but there’s something off about the design.
On any other website I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. A fair amount of blue, green, gradients, rounded corners, and overall sleekness reminiscent of a certain OS: these are all “acceptable” characteristics of good web design these days. The problem is, this is not what Twitter is about.
To me, Twitter is warm, organic, friendly—all because of the homepage (and the Fail Whale, of course). Sure, it used stock illustrations instead of commissioning original ones, but they were distinct enough. None of the cliche sunbursts and clouds, or the decidedly safer shades of blue.
And just as Twitter exploded in popularity, so did its branding. There’s an official Twitter bird, but whenever I see any other illustrated bird—hawk, owl, or any other kind—I think of Twitter. Heck, when I see that almost distinct light shade of blue (forget Tiffany & Co.!) or a rounded typeface, I think of Twitter. And while LOLcats have cemented their meme-dom for a while now, it’s really Twitter that shot them to stardom when they were used as error messages on the site.
Sure, all these inside jokes, cutesy mascots, and pastel hues may seem immature to some, and maybe the higher-ups thought it was time to get Twitter a personality makeover. What did they replace it with, exactly? tweaked Web 2.0 slash Apple design elements? Try again.
The old design elements fit Twitter’s image of sheer simplicity, of 140-character answers to the question “what are you doing?”. And today, with the homepage redesign, that image has started to slip away.
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